Vendor Summit | Preventing Vendor Account Closure

Session Transcript

Paul Sonneveld
Next up is Alexandra Carmody from Front Row. She's going to focus on proactive steps every vendor can take to really reduce the compliance risk and avoid account suspension or closure. So in other words, once you've got your 1P account, how do you make sure you keep it? A lot of you would have received notices from Amazon saying, saying that because you're not meeting certain thresholds, so there are certain challenges with your account, you are at risk of losing your Amazon Vendor account. So the next session here is really to talk about that. So I just wanna welcome Alexandra to the stage. She's gonna outline some of the early warning signs to watch out for and the fixes that really work before those problems escalate and you lose your account. Alexandra, it's great to have you. Thanks again for joining our vendor summit on day one. 

Alexandra Carmody
Awesome. Thanks, Paul. And just so I'm clear, do I just click the present button and jump into the slides as we go? 

Paul Sonneveld
You're most welcome to, yeah, you can, you can drive yourself. You can share. If you are experiencing any technical issues, I can also do that for you, but you’re free to give that a go. 

Alexandra Carmody
Awesome. I'm excited to kind of chat through this and I won't sound too much like an alarmist as we go, but it can be scary when you kind of know the signs and how Amazon functions. So I'm excited to chat today and kind of see what comments and questions come through. I'm the SVP of commercial operations at Front Row. So, you know, I've kind of seen it all across the whole scope in terms of managing brands directly, as well as going through what the negotiations look like on the Amazon side. 

So I'm going to go ahead and try and present. Let me share my screen. All right. I think I am sharing. I think it's there. Maybe not in presentation mode. Let's do a slideshow. All right, I think we're all set. So again, we're gonna be chatting through preventing your vendor account closure. And again, really the objective today is to understand and discuss proactive steps, high-level strategies that have kind of worked or been something that we've seen be really helpful across brand partners within our portfolio or clients we've chatted with, how to manage some of those compliance risks.

An overview of what are some of the safeguard operations, best practices that we've been able to see over time. And then what are those signals that kind of come up or could be kind of a trigger as you're thinking or maybe anticipating closure threats?  As sophisticated as Amazon is, they tend to do kind of closure threats or closure discussions really in the weeds, deep negotiations around the same time every year, which is leading into Q4, which was very, very stressful for vendors and sellers. So we'll kind of talk through these three major points today. But first, I think one of the big things that we chat through with our brand partners on a pretty consistent basis is just really understanding how the landscape of Amazon has changed. Because understanding that can kind of give a proof point behind why Amazon's 1P structure has also really evolved over the last two years in particular. 

So, whereas in the past, if you were a high-growth brand, really regardless of size or regardless of if you were enterprise or a smaller vendor, you could just get your products up on Amazon and they were your partner to make sure they sold through. There weren't concerns about, you know, channel sales issues around pricing. You could just get your product up with a very, very small advertising budget or a very kind of baseline one and really make it work for your brand. However, the marketplace has become extremely saturated, whether it's category saturation, specific product saturation. 

So, really understanding that you need to be fueling two engines and everything you do off-channel is going to impact Amazon almost directly. So because of that landscape shift and understanding that the way we kind of view it here and how we talk to our portfolio partners is you have two engines. You have brand equity and demand generation, and then you have your conversion and scale on Amazon. But what's different that we've seen with kind of the overall sales funnel is these two engines are now interconnected completely, and they loop back together. So really kind of driving in there and understanding, you know, there was a lot of mass account closures in 2024 and the entire kind of structure of 1P really shifted. What then did we learn in 2025? How can we utilise what we saw in 2024 and kind of, you know, the mass closures? What did we learn this year? What worked and what can we anticipate in 2026? 

So looking ahead, I've kind of mapped this out so that we have consistent categories across the top, and then we'll build on each as we kind of walk through everything here. So the first piece is around managing that compliance risk. Where have we been? What did we learn in 2024 when smaller vendors got that really alarming message from Amazon that they were no longer going to be in the 1P program? So I've broken it down into five kind of core categories. Again, these will be the same across the three sections we'll chat through.

But really it came down to Amazon wanting operational efficiency across their total business. They wanted to do and did really a major profitability overhaul. They were looking for streamlined growth. So not necessarily let's get as many sellers, as many vendors. They wanted to take what already kind of existed and grow upon that. They wanted to isolate a particular group of vendors. They needed to think through, who is it that we can kind of take resources from to add to these more enterprise-level brands that we want to be working with? And those were major shifts. 

So drilling into the first one here, which is operational efficiency, Amazon took a look under the hood and they found a ton of inefficiencies across their operating expenses. Whether it was from their FBA warehouses, the resources that they had on staff, it really became the focal point to drive some of these mass account closures in 2024 as they looked ahead to 2025. I think you can make some you know, leaps a little bit specifically in the 1P vendor space of, you know, were there tentpole holidays that didn't do as well in 2024, We all know that there was major bottlenecking between the prime day in July versus October for 1P accounts in particular. Really, what was kind of driving that was Amazon really evaluating and auditing their business to figure out we have the ability to be more efficient operationally. And with that, we want to use resources we already have and reallocate them around. 

Profitability overhaul. I know that just came up in Kara and Nick's session. This is really the driving force behind it. After reviewing all the operational expenses, Amazon really took it a step further and evaluated what's going to make their partners more profitable and improve Amazon's bottom line. It's a tough pill to swallow when you're on the smaller vendor side because you've had that handholding, you've had that relationship with Amazon, but it really all goes into kind of the third bucket of that streamlined growth. 

If you can prioritise large-scale vendors with high growth opportunities, but also high growth potential, Amazon can also then put those resources back into where they're really doubling down, and they're making safer bets, and then their resources aren't running as thin. The impacted vendors happen to be those smaller accounts between five and ten mil within the 1P environment. 

Again, never fully confirmed, but from what we've kind of seen across groups within the 1P or people who actually got those account closures, really understanding what those thresholds look like can be a good signal for future planning. And then with this enterprise-level shift, what? What really came out of it was if you're going to be focusing on enterprise-level accounts, companies, whatever it might look like, there was really a lack of clarity when these account closures happened in terms of who's going to be my catalogue manager, who's going to be my person to go to to really drive my growth. 

So that shift changed means those companies have internal teams likely. They have a larger scope. They have more opportunities that are being brought to them by Amazon. And knowing and understanding that and the fact that you have to get kind of comfortable with a lack of clarity with Amazon sometimes, it really did put a lot of that onus back on the brands directly. 

So understanding those pieces, really what happened in that time frame in 2024, what can we kind of pull out as safeguards as you think through what did we do in 2025? So that idea of application of this happened, we all maybe panicked a little bit, but what could we really pull out of it and really drive a positive kind of motion behind it? So what really worked and what should we be aware of beyond this point? 

So again, the same kind of five core categories. But with less mass closures happening in Q4 of this year, Amazon Vendor partners did put, again, more pressure back onto the brands or the clients or the actual companies. And when I say put pressure back on, I meant more so, or I mean more so, that pressure from a cost perspective. The negotiations to remain in 1P this year were much more aggressive than what we've heard from other partners in the past. So you kind of have that, you know, that juggle between our mass closure is worse or really intense negotiation is going to be worse for your brand overall. 

I think the big thing to kind of call out from that, though, is if you know you can negotiate, it means that there's something that's left on the table. So that idea of operational efficiency and what you can pull from what we learned in 2024, and really what 2025 ended up looking like was better to kind of negotiate out if you're still trying to think through with Amazon what's going to make the most sense for 1P. But that pressure back on you as the company or as the brand means you can actually be creative. 

And in the next section, we'll talk through what does that really look like, where you can maintain that operational efficiency with your vendor manager if you still have one, really maintain that strong partnership with Amazon, but actually go a little bit outside of the general scope, because as they evolve, you should be evolving in your partnership as well. The profitability overall hasn't gone anywhere with the ever-changing movements with tariffs and everything else that Amazon's going through with their removal of FBA pick and pack capabilities, their ability to actually do some of those stickering processes that are going away for just standard 3P sellers come January. Operational excellence is still at the forefront of Amazon's kind of motions and what they want to be doing in 2026, but profitability really is the driving force behind it. 

So one of the things that we've been kind of talking through with a lot of our partners is making sure that you're engaging with your vendor manager or partner if you still have one, on an ongoing, regular basis. We know that this has changed for a lot of those mid-tier vendors, where maybe you don't have a core person you can go to as regularly as you might have had in the past. But it's a give and take. 

The more you can bring to the table to say we're thinking about this off-marketing platform or this off-marketing kind of push for this product launch, what can Amazon bring to the table to kind of comp it? Those sorts of conversations can help in that overall profitability discussion as you're negotiating because you're bringing more into the funnel. That idea of bringing off-channel and kind of fueling that engine one from the beginning of our presentation, that's really where Amazon's gonna get excited, and they're gonna double down on your commitment to the platform. 

Streamlined growth obviously is always where Amazon's going to really, really drive and be picky and choosy around what products they remain or keep within your portfolio. So what we've started to see and what we've started to encourage some of our portfolio partners to do is think through skew rationalisation on a more frequent basis. A lot of our partners in the past maybe only did a SKU rationalisation annually, completely based off of sales or based off of operating costs internally to actually get the raw ingredients. 

Now with tariffs, with Amazon's profitability changes, as well as changing fees across FBA and beyond, I think it's a really important thing to think through, not waiting for Amazon to cut products from your POs and being proactive with what you want to see within the channel. You know, we're only as good as the products that perform in the eyes of a 1P relationship, but I think there's so many creative ways that you can take middle-of-the-road SKUs actually drive that growth off channel and that will ring an alarm to Amazon. 

We see that a lot with brands who play between Amazon and Walmart really heavily. And as much as you don't want to be in the middle of those two, it is important to fuel both of those kind of channels because they're going to help each other at the end of the day. They impacted vendors and kind of what we're seeing in terms of Amazon doing the mass closures and really just keeping an aligning of those ten mil plus. The baseline is now about the same for most of the vendors within 1P, unless you're part of a larger conglomerate company. 

So understanding that those large-scale enterprise companies will gain those additional features, homepage placements, and additional tentpole holidays. It also means that there's visibility behind it for those middle-tiered vendors to approach Amazon and say, we would love that level. What does it look like? And I think that goes back into as much as Amazon puts pressure on us as either agency partners or as brand partners, you can put that same sort of pressure back on Amazon. And I think that's a big shift that's happened as well in terms of account closures. 

Amazon 1P doesn't want to necessarily have you close your account or force you down that line, but they do want to make sure that they are negotiating and keeping that profitability at the forefront and making sure that their bottom line remains consistent. So, thinking through what those different partnership agreements could look like, not opting into anything with Amazon because they're telling you it's a program requirement, really understanding what the right questions are will help a ton there. 

And then those enterprise-level shifts that we kind of chatted about around those account closures in 2024, those always equate to additional services, homepage placements, value-add dollars, ad program betas. Knowing that all of those pieces are going to be passed through back to you as the brand, you can actually now plan ahead within the next year to think through, okay, let's assume we get the same sort of homepage placement we maybe received for free in our 1P account last year. 

Let's assume we have to cover those costs. What did it look like? Did we see a nice increase of sales? And then you can actually map out your marketing plan more in advance so you know what to ask for and you know what to negotiate. It's better to be in a position to know you have to negotiate and to come in really strong with a perspective than for Amazon to say this is what we're negotiating to, and it just comes down to cost, because that could be a trigger for an account closure or for a tougher conversation down the line. 

So we've talked a lot about kind of where we've been, what are some things that we've learned within the year, but there are also identifying of signals in terms of where you can go next. And this kind of goes back to the beginning around the idea of making sure you're always fueling Amazon within the confines of 1P and what's approved, but making sure that you're still growing your brand off channel from an awareness perspective that fuels back in. And understanding how all of those are going to be interconnected really will help you feel more in control and plan around Amazon in the future. 

So from the idea of thinking through, what are these sort of signals, what are things to keep in mind, I would say one of the biggest ones to always, always, always think through and evaluate is going to be around your 3PL networks. It came up in the last session  the end when I jumped in and was listening in. But understanding what your warehouses are capable of doing can be monumental to your operational efficiencies. The more efficient you are from an operations perspective, the less you are likely to get flagged by something on the back end from a 1P vendor manager perspective. But also too, the quicker you can get product into Amazon, the quicker they're going to want to sell through it. 

And there's so many FBA fees changing and so many things being modified on the back end. Having a nice 3PL backup partner, even for, say, listing items as FBM or, you know, if you have products that need to be cold shipped, finding a 3PL partner who can actually cold ship for you for certain SKUs within your portfolio can again be monumental to the way that you are operating within Amazon, keeping and adhering to your 1P and staying within that program, but still growing your business in a really meaningful way. 

I think one of the biggest things that we've been hearing from brand partners and prospects is this idea of hybrid modelling. So, are there strategic initiatives where Amazon doesn't wanna necessarily retain your full catalogue, but from a total omni-channel strategy and as a brand, you want all of your products listed on Amazon. It's very common, especially if you're looking for investment, it's a big deal to have consistency across your channels. 

1P vendors will order what's selling the best. We all know that. We know that they really live and breathe and die by the eighty-twenty rule. But, you know, some companies are feeling as though they're leaving money on the table. There's areas to AB test. There's areas to grow. maybe additional kits, additional models, whatever that could really look like. So operationally, having some sort of backup or some way to be thinking through, would a hybrid model make sense for some of my SKUs? If Amazon really starts cutting on your POs, how do you still grow that core piece of the business and understand that consumer? 

The idea of being proactive in what those major SKU launches are, whether they're cuts or initial launches that you're doing as a brand, whenever you can really try and chat with your vendor manager, anyone you can kind of grab and get a hold of at Amazon, they're going to want to double down because anything you do off channel, is going to grow your sales on Amazon. And I know I've said that a million times, but Amazon also exists in a space of if you're paying or spending that money anyway, and they're getting the benefit, they're more likely to pass through something to you as you grow within either your category or within a particular SKU assortment. 

So, really understanding what that game plan is, using it as a negotiation tactic of we're doing a massive activation. What can Amazon do to help us? And get really creative with your SKUs, new kits, new bundles, multi-packs. If Amazon doesn't necessarily see growth on a single item, maybe it's something that's a high replenishment item, and you can actually dive into your subscribe and save in your repeat purchasers and maybe approach Amazon to say, We see potential to do a two and three-pack. Let's test it out over three months. 

I do think it's interesting with vendor managers and how they've shifted because there's so many ways in which internal folks at Amazon either get comped or the way that they're tracking to their sales goals. If you can find any sort of tactic that's unique and interesting and it works, your vendor manager is going to be on board if you have the operations to do it. And you also can have that discussion with Amazon where they're the most profitable and how they're purchasing the items together. 

And then in terms of vendors and all the shifts, if all of the vendors that aren't necessarily the P&Gs, the Unilevers of the world, if they're all relatively equal in terms of offers, it means that you can adapt and inform your strategy more directly. You can consider a more hands-on approach when it comes to things like ad strategy, because those teams have now been segmented out and are separate from your vendor manager and your category manager. Your strategy can go beyond that point. Really knowing that can empower your brand to do differentiation through storytelling, which I think, through content and optimised copy, is going to be really major in 2026 as you're maintaining and really trying to avoid that 1P closure. 

And then anything at that enterprise level, again, is going to happen first. That's where the betas are going to go, the exclusive temple holidays, that marketing plan that you might get from your vendor manager. The more information that you can be sharing or trying to provide ahead to Amazon throughout the year does help them to just kind of stay in the mix with you. 

And I know that that sounds kind of silly because everything with Amazon is really rooted in what's driving the most for their business and your business as well. But understanding that they are going to bring more to the table with the more you share, that's going to be really, really key here. Feeling uncomfortable maybe in the moment, but getting comfortable pushing Amazon is going to help for future conversations, being much easier if and when they decide to do mass account closures again, and it's based off of some rolling revenue. 

And then the big piece that I think you always really need to understand or think through or, you know, just keep in the back of your mind and maybe do this on an ongoing basis, you know, just to make sure that you have your ducks in a row is compare your models. An evaluation on an ongoing basis between your trade-offs across margin, agility, and operational ownership can be really paramount if and when you start feeling there are signals that 1P might be taking down your account and kind of putting you into a 3P environment. 

So think through having someone on your side who can be a strategic partner internally, even if it's not a full team, to ensure that if 1P went away at the end of Q1, which likely would never happen. But of course, we exist in this space of thinking through all of the different scenarios here. Are you set up to handle chargebacks? Are you set up to manage your ad strategy without an agency partner? What does it look like to kind of sell your products at consignment versus just selling to Amazon? 

Really understanding these key areas in terms of the models and what the trade-offs look like empowers you even further to have more strategic conversations with Amazon. It can be very easy to get stuck in that kind of endless loop of here's our strategy. Here's what it looks like. We are category leaders. We know that this works with other brands. Push back on Amazon. Ask them more questions. Even if you're playing in a particular category, ask them what that category makeup looks like in terms of top-line revenue across the competitors that they're noting.

These sorts of tactics are really, really key in terms of giving you the power and the ownership back to put that pressure into your conversations with Amazon at any point in terms of negotiation. But overall, a lot of these are signals. Whether you can see it from off-channel with 3Psellers noticing all of these FBA fee changes, even if it's not a 1P kind of specific notion from Amazon of something that they're shifting, it's always going to impact every single team as you go. That is all I have for my presentation. So I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing. And I think I'm bringing Paul back in. 

Paul Sonneveld
I am back, and my microphone is also working. That is great. Thank you so much, Alexandra. That is fantastic. Such rich and valuable content there. I love your frameworks and how you thought about that and how you really equipping us to really think pretty hard about those questions and how to hold on to your account in a way that it drives success for both Amazon and yourselves. 

So we have a little bit of time left for questions. If you have a burning question for Alexandra, please pop them in the chat window here or on the comments on LinkedIn or YouTube. But to kick us off, I have a few questions here that I've collected earlier. And so let's start with that. Let's talk, maybe just about a very pragmatic question here, right? We're in the middle of a negotiation with Amazon. How do you know? I mean, I think it's easy for Amazon to, I guess, hint at closing the account as a negotiation lever and as a hardball tactic. 

Alexandra Carmody
Yep. 

Paul Sonneveld
I think as a vendor, how can you tell the difference between sort of Amazon just playing hardball versus actually my account is really at risk of closure, right? So what do you look at? How would you advise your clients who are really concerned about that in the middle of the negotiation process? 

Alexandra Carmody
Yeah, that's a great question too, because it came up really heavily this year, in the 2025, looking into 2026 negotiation that sort of just happened. I would say the big thing to know between hardball versus total closure is if you're able, and it sounds silly, it's if you're able to get your vendor manager on the phone to have a larger discussion. If you just get an email where they say you're out of compliance for something or we have to take a look at this, we're looping in with another team, push back and try and get your Amazon Vendor or whoever reached out to you on a phone call, go through a deep dive with them and say, I'd like to understand what you're looking at. 

Most brands, portfolio partners that we have don't a hundred percent feel comfortable doing that because Amazon has brought so much to the table for brands in the past. Getting really comfortable there and knowing I can push back and making sure we can jump in and say, hey, really walk me through why we're not at a threshold for sales or whatever that might look like. That's going to be really, really key and understanding of, do I even have the runway to negotiate this? Or secondarily to that, are they actually going to shut down my account, or are they just trying to get something else out of your brand? 

I think the other thing to kind of keep in mind with that, too, that our brands have really taken kind of a hard line on is you should be able to ask questions. And getting on a call is much easier because Amazon Vendors are more likely to share if they are over the phone versus via email. So, getting comfortable with that kind of motion. I think that that's really key in terms of is it hardball or is it a true account closure? A true account closure should always be something that's coming from a completely separate team within Amazon, and you'll see all the press behind it. So if you start feeling like a hardball kind of pitch or a hardball discussion with Amazon, it's likely just coming from your vendor manager, and it's likely tied to some sort of internal sales goal. 

Paul Sonneveld
Thank you, Alexandra. Good to give that perspective on that probably emotionally charged question for many, many vendors as in the middle of negotiation there. Let's talk about signals. What do you consider to be sort of silent indicators? I mean, how do I know POs dropping off, shortages, chargebacks, VM doesn't respond to my calls anymore. They've written me off. Anything that you like, what are the things that you look at and say, actually, these are early warning signals and we need to start taking this seriously and come up with a plan? 

Alexandra Carmody
Yeah, I think the biggest one is PO shortages. If you are consistently sending in, say, sixty to seventy-five days' worth of inventory and then week over week, Amazon is cutting down particular SKUs or total POs to be carrying closer to like thirty to forty-five on hand. That can be a silent signal because you're also not going to get an exchange from that. You're just going to get the standard order. They're hoping that you process it. 

I think shortages is another one. It's a really good one to call out. Amazon might say, hey, we don't want the original amount. Can you actually send us less? And I think another really silent indicator is how consistently is Amazon bringing down the price of your product, whether it's matching another channel or they're just carrying really long on something due to poor forecasting? I think that's another really big silent indicator because, as much as Amazon's going to price match almost automatically, yes, sometimes you get those chargebacks from that, they don't want that to be their long-term strategy with you as a brand partner either. 

So the longer that goes on without any sort of kind of intervention or discussion, that can be a really consistent silent signal that Amazon's always going to be tracking on the back end is what's actually moving through. And if we're lowering price, but not really seeing an increase in terms of total units or volume being sold, really, what's going on there? Is a problem with the brand? Is there a problem with Ad spend or whatever it might be? 

And then, of course, your vendor manager responsiveness. Yeah, that's a pretty big indicator of a silent kind of signal that maybe something's going on, or I think what we've often seen is something will change dramatically in terms of team structure at Amazon. And we saw that most recently this year, where kind of the beauty teams all went into one large group. 

There was no real differentiator between 3P premium and general 3P or 1P beauty. That whole team kind of now sits in a whole customer service group together. So a lot of the time, those are also the silent signals. You start hearing that these groups or these internal teams are shifting around, they have different category leaders, or whatever it is, that's usually another big silent signal that something else is in motion at Amazon. 

Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. probably a question more around kind of the hybrid aspect of managing both, right? And I actually was just looking, I won't bring it up now, but forty-four percent of people attending today, attending live, are actually hybrid sellers. So I thought that's a really relevant question. So my question here was, you know, we're considering a hybrid to reduce some of that risk. What's your rule of thumb? If you have one, what's your rule of thumb for which SKUs should move to 3P versus stay on 1P? 

Alexandra Carmody
Yeah. Hybrid is a big motion we're seeing with a lot of brands. I think when you're thinking of, I always think about everything in like a one, two, three-year kind of outlook. If you're thinking through a hybrid plan in your first year, you're going to want to keep your top sellers within 1P. From a consistency perspective, from an organic rankings perspective, from just keeping that relationship with your 1P vendor, it's better to keep your top sellers there. And likely you're going to get better placements or potential ad beta programs, things of that nature. 

What I would actually do is take your middle-of-the-road SKUs, try and launch them in 3P and utilise some of those things from a content storytelling perspective that you can't do in 1P and see what that does within the first year for kind of that middle-of-the-road group. The thing you have to keep in mind with that is, as your middle-of-the-road SKUs do well on 3P, you're going to have very similarly to Walmart conversations with your Amazon 1P vendor about doesn't make sense for us to move this group back into 1P. That puts you in a position of power, though. That puts you in a really good position to have those negotiations at a higher level with Amazon. 

And then I would say the other piece with a 3P that you can consider is a net new SKU put together in multi-packs. If you have the operational kind of help to do it, and you have that kind of built within your  3PL networks or your warehouse, consider doing something like your multi-packs where you can actually variate out from say a single item or something along those lines, keep it within your kind of 1P listing in regards to your reviews and everything being within the variation, but see if you can kind of target that repeat consumer to be purchasing something of a value pack on a product that does well. 

Again, you might still end up in a position where 1P wants to take that skew down the line, but you, as the selle,r have the control in that 3P seller environment to test that on your own, to not take on that risk of Amazon saying it didn't work after a month, we're not going to buy it anymore. And then you're sitting on a ton of goods you've already kitted out. That sort of kind of approach can reduce the risk. It can also open up a huge white space of opportunity. It gives you more control to test different things from an SEO perspective or a copy perspective that maybe you can't do in a 1P environment either way. 

Paul  Sonneveld
Great advice there is actually a lot of benefits to operating a 3P account beyond just driving sales access to a whole range of tools that vendors don't always have access to. So it's useful to have at least one foot in each camp and optimise for that. Last question for you for today, or at least part of this session. I know we'll have an opportunity to engage with you further as part of our panel. But, so, slightly off topic perhaps, but your advice would be great here. So if our margins are being squeezed by tariffs, obviously a very topical thing this year, freight or other category changes, how do you best communicate that back to Amazon without just sounding like an excuse? Amazon probably doesn't want to hear it, right? I guess maybe another way to ask the question is, is there other things that you've seen this year that have worked better than others? 

Alexandra Carmody
Yeah. I mean, this is the question. We, within Front Row, we work across beauty, health and wellness, and CPG. And a lot of the brands that we work with in the wellness space, supplements in particular, are having this a really big issue when it comes to raw ingredient sourcing. So instead of kind of positioning it as it's an excuse. I think kind of letting Amazon know we're trying to produce the actual product and the ingredients are what's killing us on the tariff, or the bottles, the tops to everything seems to be the big point of contention with a lot of brands. 

Setting forth with them, hey, this is the kind of approach we're taking as a total business. We think this is how long it might take. As long as Amazon understands that there's kind of a motion and it's a much broader kind of scope for your total business that's being impacted versus just the Amazon channel. I think that's when they read it less like an excuse. If they feel as though you're kind of giving away something to another retail partner, or you're doing something on DTC, and Amazon's not getting the same benefit, that's when those conversations can be a little contentious. 

But I think in general, if you can approach Amazon and say, hey, this is a total business issue for us. It's not just for the products we're selling on your channel. They're way more likely to say, great, what does the timing look like? Okay, let's actually re-forecast. Let's re-demand plan from the 1P side. And then maybe there are opportunities of SKUs they've cut previously to kind of run through and run them through a 3P kind of hybrid model. 

Paul Sonneveld
Fantastic. That is great, Alexandra. Thank you so much. I actually noticed we've got some other great questions coming in, particularly from David here around direct fulfillment. I'm going to hold that question until our expert panel a little bit later on. But yeah, don't worry, David, we'll get to your question for sure. All right, Alexandra, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on really how to work better with Amazon, how to prevent account closures and all the things we can think about there. So I look forward to welcoming you back to the panel very, very shortly. 

Alexandra Carmody
Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Have a good day.